Text Size:
“But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
That’s the King James. Now, hear the Message Bible: “But you, Timothy, man of God: Run for your life from all this. Pursue a righteous life — a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith. Seize the eternal life, the life you were called to, the life you so fervently embraced in the presence of so many witnesses.”
“Seize the eternal life!”, Paul said. The King James rendered it, “Lay hold on eternal life.”
How do you do that? We “lay hold” or “seize” eternal life by inviting Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior. Then we continue to “abide” in Him. Jesus stated, “I am the vine. You are the branches. If you “abide” in Me, and I in you, you will bring forward much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing!”
So to “seize”, or to “lay hold” on eternal life, we invite Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior. Then we “abide” in Him. Jesus said on another occasion, “He that endures unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
Once we start this race, we’ve got to finish it! It’s easy enough for a younger person to start this race, but when you are still running when you are middle aged, you find there’re are lot of obstacles to continue to run, plus a shortening of your breath! Then when a person gets retirement age, and his bones and muscles begin to feel the stress, it’s more difficult to run than ever before, but we’ve got to keep running, no matter what! In this marathon, we continue to run ‘til we cross the finish line!
If we will continue to depend on the Holy Spirit throughout the race, we’re going to continue to run until the end of the race, but if we ever begin to depend on our own strength, we’ll surely fall by the way-side.
Notice what we’re to do, “Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience meekness.” You know, people who haven’t been born-again don’t have those virtues. Folks that are not believers go about to establish their own righteousness, in other words, their own set of values. Non-believers, certainly, are anything but godly. In fact they’ve pretty well eliminated God from their lives.
They don’t have the “God kind” of faith. The love of God is sadly lacking. I would say that non-believers, generally, are impatient, to say the least, and, meekness is quite conspicuous by its absence in their lives. They, certainly, do not exhibit the righteousness of Christ, without which we have no eternal life.
There is, absolutely, no way to make it into the next life with God without the Lord Jesus Christ living in our hearts!
Jesus died for us to save us from our sins. He was buried and rose again after three days to give us the hope of eternal life. That’s the Gospel. That’s the “good news”.
You may be eight or eighty years old; but if you have a desire to come to Christ He won’t turn you down, I guarantee it! But you’ve got to WANT to. He wants no one in heaven that doesn’t want to be there. Heaven would be hell if a bunch of people were there who didn’t want to be there! It’s your choice!
Click to write to Pastor Strader, E-Mail Pastor.
back to top